


It's Only What He Deserves

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Voltron: Vehicle Voltron
Genre: Cop AU, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, VERY fictional BDSM lifestyle, bringing back my super rare pair for this, he's a bi guy, my knee-jerk response to all the bad-end Shiro stories I've seen lately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-08-26 04:52:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16674847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: a modern day cop AU.  Shiro's the detective in charge of a squad that hunts down serial killers.  That isn't what this story is about. This story is about what he does in his off time to deal with the pressure and weight of his job.   And for that, he needs a professional dominatrix.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> lately I've seen some ‘Shiro gets manipulated/bad end relationship’ stuff across my dash and all I could think was - well, this. To disclaimer, this is an alternative lifestyle setting involving doms and subs. Its also a highly fictionalized version of that so please take my version of it with a grain of salt. I just had a burr of an idea thanks to a friend’s ‘cop Shiro AU’ pictures and I had to get it out in writing. Consider this a modern day AU ‘what if’ exploration on my part of if things were just a little bit more dark and broken.

“Punish me.”

“Pardon?”

It was her ‘school teacher’ tone of voice, the sharp, refined one that could ice a man, warning of a coming childhood disapproval that no one ever really managed to shake entirely off no matter how much they grew up.  He still refused to back down. 

Determined.

“When we started this, you asked if I wanted to be punished.  I said no.  I’ve changed my mind.”

A little under a year ago, there had been a string of killings in the city. Someone had been picking young men up at BDSM play parties and torturing them to death.  Shiro had been the detective in charge of leading the task force in charge of finding the killer.  But the community had been suspicious and closed off.  Even the people willing to talk to the police had been guarded.  Shiro had needed an in.  A bit of careful asking around had led him to a retired professional dominatrix that might be willing to help.

Going in, he hadn’t been sure what to expect.  Latex and metal studs mostly.  Instead - he’d met Lisa.

Lisa, who dressed like every schoolboy’s fantasy librarian, in her sharp pencil skirt and high necked, button blouse, with her hair pinned up in a bun and glasses he later found out she didn’t need that never quite hid the cat eye liner or the hungry intelligence in the dark eyes behind them.  She’d shut the door on his face, literally, when he’d first approached her.

But he’d persisted and once she’d been convinced of both his credentials and his sincerity, she’d agreed to be his guide into the community.  He’d gone undercover as her client.  And, to carry off the part, she’d trained him the way she would have trained a real client so he didn’t give himself away at dungeon gatherings.

He’d caught the killer and the evidence to convict him.  Stopped that streak of killings at least.

And, afterward…. he’d kept showing up at Lisa’s door….

The same way he was now.  And, as she always did, she stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame of it and didn’t invite him immediately in.  She always made him wait in the hallway of the brownstone in front of her apartment door after she opened it, never let him directly in.  As if each time he had to be measured all over again before he was allowed into her world.  He stood there patiently now and his eyes didn’t shift away from hers.  She didn’t accept his answer right away and he hadn’t honestly expected her too.  Instead he watched her red lips thin, a sure sign she was weighing balances in her head, and then she stepped back and let him in.  He did as he’d always done, as she’d trained him to, and shut the door behind him, locking it before taking off his shoes and shedding his coat to hang it on the peg next to the door.

“What brought this on?” she asked.  But he wasn’t going to tell her.  It wasn’t her business - or her problem.  It was his.  His fault.  So all he answered was:    
  
“Change of heart.  Will you do it?”

Her dark eyes went flat behind their glass, told him without words that she didn’t approve of his non-answer. But that was the deal.  He was a customer, she offered a commodity.  She wasn’t supposed to ask what he’d do with it or why he needed it.  He looked just as flat back at her.  Determined in his decision.  His chest ached.  He needed it to stop, even if it was only for an hour or two.

For a long moment they simply looked at each other, trying to read the other, trying to hide themselves from that reading.  Him more than her.  He didn’t need to read her to know that she was balancing in her head again, as thorough as Osiris weighing his heart against a feather of truth.   Finally, she turned away and headed for her kitchen.  Her dark chocolate voice drifted back over her shoulder and gave nothing away.

“I will.  Take your spot.  I will be back soon.”

The relief was almost stronger than the dread and it hit him harder than he’d expected.  He knew he’d asked for punishment but Lisa had never raised a hand to him before, never done anything to hurt him intentionally.  She prolonged some things, tension to the point of torture, but never pain.  Never violence.  He didn’t know what she’d use to hurt him now, just that she was creative and patient and tended to know how to stretch anticipation.  He took off his gun holster, locked it and his wallet and wristwatch in her desk and set the key on the edge of it for her along with his on call phone, unbuttoned the sleeves and his collar of his shirt. Took off his tie, his belt and his socks and folded them neatly as he set them where they belonged.  Then he shifted around and knelt on the hard wood floor in his 'spot’, hands linked lightly behind him, head bowed.  The silence of the room settled in around him like a weight and he felt the familiar prickle of her air conditioning against his suddenly sensitive skin and the way his hair hung close over his eyes.  Each heartbeat was a count.  She didn’t make him wait long however.  Soon he heard the familiar tap tap tap of her high heels and he felt a surge of relief that almost felt good.  

She’d take over now.  He’d be able to let go.

There was the soft sound of the key on the desk as she slid it and his phone off and then the toes of her patent heels came into his line of vision as she stopped in front of him.  Her hand rested on his head, long cool fingers curled in his hair and then fisted.  It pulled but not to the point of pain.  Almost - but not quite.  He felt the thrill of it, and of her complete possession, down through his veins.  When she was in control, he didn’t have to be.

“In this apartment, you are mine alone.  You no longer belong to yourself.  You are only here for me, to do as I please and to feel nothing but what I tell you you may feel.  I am the only thing that matters to you, when we are in this apartment.  There is nothing outside the door and the windows.  There is no other world.  There is only here.  Here is all that exists.  Here, I am the only person that matters.”

“Here is all that exists,” he intoned dutifully.  Originally, the words had bothered him, seemed silly almost, but he understood now.  It was the ritual of the thing. The repetition trained his mind, made it easier to accept and submit.  Each time it made more sense and felt more comfortable to give himself up to her.  He felt the tightness in his chest ease even as he said them, like a familiar blanket pulled over him or a song from old memories in the back of his mind.  The outside world was slowly drifting away from his focus and he let it.  This was what he was here for.  “You are the only person that matters.”

“Good,” she let go of his hair.  Stroked her hand over his head like a pet and he let himself enjoy the pleasure of her approval.  Outside, in the real world, he never would have - but this was her apartment, her world, the only world that existed for them both and he had nothing to hide from her here.  Nothing to be ashamed of.  No expectations he needed to live up to.  And her approval of him and the stroke of her hand over his hair felt good.  He exhaled and felt some of the tension slip away, felt a weight seem to settle over him and press him down. She would take care of him.  He didn’t have to be strong or decisive or competent anymore. 

 Her voice was soft.

“Do you remember the safe word?”

“I do,” he promised.  "Veritas.“  His university’s old motto.  

"Good,” there was a quiet smile in her voice this time as she continued stroking his hair and he wanted, suddenly, to simply curl up at her feet and be nothing but here.  Just - here, with her, in this world where nothing but her mattered and she was happy with him. That was the lure, and danger, of this arrangement.  It made everything so very temptingly simple.  It let him shut his mind off and it made him glad that he could.

“Now,” her fingertip tipped his chin up and he raised his eyes to find her very very dark ones all but swallowing him.  His voice was soft and velvet and there was steel under its soft darkness.  “Tell me why you deserve punishment today.”

There were no such thing as requests in this world.  Whatever she asked, she was given.  Whatever she told him, he did.  A part of him, still buried deep, aware that this was all make-believe, that there was a world outside and he would go back to it afterward, rebelled.  It was cheating to ask him now, when he wasn’t able to refuse.  Except - of course he could refuse. He could refuse at any time.  Leave at any time.  She’d made that very clear right from the start.

Instead, his mouth opened and he heard himself saying:

“I was supposed to catch someone.  I failed to and someone is dead because of it.   No one else will blame me for it but I know I could have done better.   Should have done better.  You’ll make me pay for failing.  Not enough, but maybe enough to let me pretend that damaging myself makes up for some of the damage I let happen.”  
  
He watched her eyes and he’d never felt so small and vulnerable before, not even for her.  With his head, he knew it hadn’t been his fault.  But he had held that mother while she cried for her daughter that was never coming home and - somehow it was still his fault.  He’d missed something, some clue or logical connection.  If he’d been - _more_ \- than whoever was preying on pretty young brunette women would be in jail and off the street already.  And Martha Joy would be home in bed in her own apartment instead of cold in a morgue with a grey faced mother watching over her body.  He shuddered, because, in this place, he didn’t have his usual defenses against the emotions he usually tried so hard to shore up inside himself and he looked up into Lisa’s swallowing eyes and inside, he cringed.  All it would take was one flicker, one whisper through her eyes when she looked at him like this and he knew.  He just knew.  She was his last piece, whether he meant her to be or not.  And if she, even for a second, recognized it as his fault - even his logic wouldn’t be able to tell him it wasn’t anymore.

All he saw in her eyes though was stillness, like dark water over a bottomless lake, giving nothing back - until there was a very slow blink and her eyes were suddenly so heartbroken and sad and full of him that his breath froze up in his chest and his heart constricted and refused to beat.

“Oh, Takashi,” she whispered and it was wind sighing lonely between the  mountain pines.  Her finger left his chin and stroked his cheek, palm coming to cradle his face there and he, suddenly, without warning, felt like sobbing.  Bursting into tears and crying his heart out the way only a child could.  It scared him, how strong it was, and he pulled back instinctively, ducking his chin, locking his jaw.  He wasn’t a child.  He hadn’t been a child for a lot longer than his body hadn’t.  He didn’t cry anymore.  He couldn’t afford to.

Her fingers threaded through his hair again though and she didn’t say anything for a long time.  It let him pull himself back together and he found that, more than anything, he simply wanted to lean into her and just - be.  To close his eyes and lean against her legs with her hand in his hair and do nothing but be there, with her, and breathe.  Some days she let him do that - but only after one of their sessions.  He was pretty sure you didn’t simply lean on someone’s legs for an entire session and do nothing else.  And - he had asked her to punish him and she had said she would.  He deserved that and he knew she’d do it the right way.  She was a professional.  Her fingertip tapped the top of his head finally.

“Shrimp.”

It was an order, one he recognized and he immediately folded into himself in the right position.  Usually there where ropes involved.   Lisa was a master of shibari and Shiro - enjoyed it much more than he knew he sanely should.  Bondage was what most of their sessions consisted of, in one way or another.  Lisa’s hand left him and her heels tapped across the floor and down the hall, steady sharp clicks, leaving him alone again.  Leaving him behind.  

It was an awkward position to hold, one that would start to strain the longer he held it, but he knew how to hold it and the slow warning of tension through his muscles was a relief of sorts.  He knew this kind of tension, recognized it.  It was predictable, something he could understand and work with.  And, soon, he knew that the burn of it would become too distracting for his brain to keep thinking.  He needed that.  He needed that desperately.

The position strained the seams of his clothing where the fabric pulled across his flexed muscles, along his back, the shoulders of his shirt, the fabric of his thighs.  He shut his eyes and focused on the sensations.  The tight confinment of fabric, the growing strain though his muscles, the small aches and pains of joints held locked tight too long.  He counted his breathes, the beat of his heart, to measure the time.  Determined to be patient.  She would leave him that way as long as she wanted to.  It was his duty to endure until she released him.  He hoped, whatever she was setting up in her ‘guest room’ involved suspension.  The lack of stability denied him the ability to react, something they both had found out he actually enjoyed, the helplessness of it, the complete surrender of even the most instinctive reaction control to her.  Whatever punishment she came up with, he… would still miss it if she didn’t suspend him at some point.  Usually he was allowed to request things, positions or situations.  He didn’t think he could do that with punishment.  He didn’t think he deserved to.

He was pretty sure, kneeling there, that his colleagues at the precinct wouldn’t have taken well if they found out he still came here.  Somehow, right now, it didn’t matter and he shut his eyes, felt the way his bangs shifted against the polished wood of her floor with each breath.  He could sit looser and still be in the right position but that wasn’t what she had meant and the burn he was starting to feel through his muscles felt almost like relief.  It made the painful knot that had been in his stomach since the call to a new crime scene at three this morning easier to ignore.

He was so deeply focused on the growing burn through his muscles and the growing aches in his joints that he, at first, didn’t even realize it when she came back, turned so inward, here in this safe place, that he hadn’t even heard the sound of her heels approaching.  He simply opened his eyes at some point to see the shiny toes of her high heels in front of him.  He had no idea how long she’d been there - and she didn’t interrupt him either, standing perfectly still as well herself.  Not for the first time, he found himself wondering how she had learned her trade - and who had trained her.  He couldn’t imagine her begging anyone for anything.

“Release,” she finally said the word and he carefully loosened his arms and legs, feeling the jolts of almost pain through them as they shifted out of their held position.  It was more effective with the ropes, he preferred it with the feeling of the ropes against him, but his body still told him it had been was close enough.  She gave him the minute he needed and then told him:

“Stand.”

Sessions were usually single word commands, spoken calmly and without emotion, at least until the aftercare part of them and she always kept her emotional distance from him.

“Strip.”

He glanced at her from under the fringe of his bangs but didn’t hesitate, quickly and methodically taking off his clothes.  Lisa was a professional.   He had never allowed to touch her and she always stayed fully clothed.  His clothing, however, was often optional, especially since he didn’t bring a spare pair and he wasn’t allowed to leave anything here.

If he was being truthful, he liked the way the ropes felt against his bare skin.

Careful, he folded his clothing and laid it next to his tie before straightening to face her again.  The first time they’d done this, he’d been concerned about her reaction to the scars across his body but she hadn’t reacted then and she didn’t now.  It was natural between them by this point and he didn’t feel ashamed or self-conscious.

“Arm.”

His eyebrows went up at her for that, but it wouldn’t be the first time either and so he carefully took off his prosthetic and the pressure sock under it.  He couldn’t leave that off for too long but it was necessary to let it breathe from time to time anyway and this wouldn’t be the first time she worked with the stump of what was left of his arm instead of the prosthetic he usually wore over it.  In the world outside, he felt like less of a person when he had to take off his arm.  In this one it was simply another piece of clothing, something that, somehow, it was easy to leave behind.  She waited until he put those on top of his folded clothes as well and then turned sharply on her heel and walked back down the hall.

“Follow,” drifted back to him over her shoulder and he did immediately, even if his legs protested the new movement after the enforced cramping of earlier.  

If Lisa was still a professional offering her services, she would have called the room down the hallway her studio or her dungeon.  Since she’d retired, she told him, it was simply her ‘guest room’.  Though he had to question any ‘guests’ that stayed there.  Sometimes, he wondered if he was the only ‘client’ she took even if she was retired or if there were others just like him.  It was stupid to feel jealous of someone else having the same kind of attention she paid to him and he ignored, again, the twinge of it when it flicked at the back of his mind.  Here was the only thing he needed to worry about and there was only her and him.

She didn’t open the guest room door though.  Instead, she turned and opened the door right across the hall from it.  Went inside and, because she hadn’t told him to stop yet, he followed her in -

to a bathroom.  It wasn’t the smaller guest one he was used to.  This one was larger, obviously specially made, white and silver and he had time to register that the air smelled like some kind of exotic scent, not a perfume but not a spice either.  Something rich and heady, a little earthy but with a bite to it.

He must have inhaled because he could hear the smile in her voice when she said:

“Saffron.”  And then, almost immediately, she turned and pointed to the tub, full, he saw, of amber colored water.  

“Its just for the scent,” her chin tipped toward the tub.  “Get in.”

She’d never done anything with water before and he had to pause, just for a heartbeat.  He didn’t know what kind of punishment she had in mind for him and the logical part of him told him he didn’t need to find out.  Asking her to hurt him hadn’t been a choice made when his head was in the right place.  She’d let him back out and not think any less of him because she always let him take things at his own speed and back out if he decided he wasn’t ready.  There was a layer of clear oil on top of the water and he could see the steam coming off of it.  How hot was it?  He knew first hand what scalds from boiling water looked like thanks to his job.

She stood patiently next to the tub and didn’t move, watching him with her still eyes.  And that was what decided him.  She was a professional.  Whatever damage she did to him it wouldn’t be permanent and it wouldn’t be bad enough to keep him from his job tomorrow.  Determined, he stepped into the tub, first one foot and then the other, hissing as the heat shocked partway up his calves.   She didn’t move.

“Take your time.  Go slow.  Stop when you need to.  Until you are submerged up to your neck.  You’ll stay that way until I come back for you.”

She left him then, turning off the bathroom light on the way out and for a second he thought she was going to leave him in complete darkness, that perhaps the water and the heat of it was some form of sensory deprivation or overload.  Not all pain was physical.  But his eyes adjusted almost immediately and he saw there were small white lights along the upper edging of the wall that flickered slow to life and then back into nothing in patterns.  Christmas lights.  And she’d left the door open as well.  It gave the room an enclosed feeling without making it feel shut off or trapped.  Like - a cave full of starlight - and he wondered how badly he needed distraction if he was getting poetic.  But she’d told him to submerge and so, as quickly as he could manage, he slowly lowered himself into the water, having to stop from time to time as more sensitive areas of his body came in contract with the water until they were adjusted enough that he could keep going.  Finally though, he was completely in - wondering, vaguely, where she’d gotten such a large tub considering his always ended up with his knees or upper body above water level.  Still it was - he inhaled damp, rich scented air into his lungs, felt the squeeze from the heat and the water around his chest  - and felt the way his muscles, so recently strained, twinged in the hot water.  She hadn’t told him what position to rest in, just that he needed to be underwater and it felt so nice to stretch out his legs in a tub and not have to rest them on the far wall that he indulged himself a little and simply pushed back into the incline of the tub until he could rest his head on the back lip of it.  In the hush, he could hear the quiet white noise of the bathroom fan pulling the steam out of the air near the vent, lulling him so that he wasn’t left alone to listen to just his own silence.  On the wall across from him the slowly dimming and renewing lights continued their steady pattern.

This didn’t feel like punishment.  Not once his body had adjusted to the heat of the water, muscles almost relaxing against their own choice, starting to go thick feeling and heavy.  He shut his eyes - opened them again to watch the white starlight again because it was better than what was still waiting behind his eyelids.  He was good at staying still and waiting for her.  He’d always been good at staying still and waiting.  Patience yields focus.  Just…. his eyelids drooped again and he left them half open, slow blinks, feeling how slack his body felt.  Breathing slowing.  If she didn’t come get him soon he wouldn’t be much good to her.  She expected him to focus entirely on her during sessions, to respond to her immediately.  But his brain was starting to feel loggy.  He should get out - except she’d told him to stay put until she came back.  She was a professional.  She had to know what she was doing.  But it had been weeks since he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep.  She couldn’t know how exhausted to his bones he really was and he didn’t think falling asleep in her tub was ‘punishment’.  Not unless he went under and drowned.  For the first time in days his lips finally curved up in a dry smile at his own stupid humor.  

He was drifting by the time she came back and it took him a minute to respond to her as he watched her walk into the room.  She looked different and at first his loggy brain couldn’t pick up on why in the dim light.

No click, his mind told him.  

You didn’t hear the heels when she came in.

“Almost done,” her voice was the same though as she moved away from the door and came over to sit on the edge of the tub near his head.  

Legs, his mind noted and he realized she wasn’t wearing her skirt.  And that her legs went on forever.  Leggings.  She was wearing leggings, simple dark black ones and her feet were covered in socks instead of patent leather heels.  He’d never seen her in - 

“Lean forward,” confused or not, he responded automatically, sitting up and hissing as the way his muscles protested, entirely weak feeling.  There was a quiet splash behind him before:

“Lean forward more and close your eyes.  I need the back of your head.  Hold your breath.”

He did as she instructed and she poured water over his hair.  And then again.  One more time and then she told him:

“You can breathe now,” before he heard her flicking her fingers lightly together.  It told him where they were.  They’d both found out early on that surprising him with touch was a bad thing, something that had surprised him but that Lisa had seemed almost prepared for.  Now she made enough sound with them, faint, so he could track them and so he wasn’t surprised when they touched his damp hair.  And then something cooler and liquid did too and it took him a full minute of her fingers moving to realize:

“You’re washing my hair?”

“It smelled like cigarette smoke.”

“Sorry.”

“Mmm.”  No acceptance of the apology which meant she didn’t think he’d needed to make it in the first place.  It had never occurred to him what his hair smelled like when he showed up after work for one of their sessions but plenty of the men he worked with smoked.  He’d gotten used to the smell but he hadn’t realized - 

he should probably start taking a shower before he came over.

Except then her long fingers were scrubbing through his hair and he had to shut his eyes, head falling even further forward on his suddenly loose feeling neck and he simply forgot to think for a very long time, only coming around once she was rinsing his hair clean for a second time.

He felt - almost - human.

She was up again a moment later, over to the counter.

“Turning the light up, shut your eyes.”

He did, and there was nothing in the darkness now, only the faint hint of slowly growing brightness.  He was tempted to look, simply because it was human nature to open your eyes when something changed but he knew that wasn’t what she had told him and so he kept them closed.  Heard her settle on the edge of the tub again and then the soft rub of her fingers together so he could follow them again.  

“Tip your head back.  You need a shave.”

He did squint one eye open then, only to shut it immediately, both in awareness she hadn’t told him he could open them and at the light.  If she noticed she let him get away with it for a change and he tipped his head back for her, feeling first her fingers and palm supporting his jaw, the stroke of what he assumed as bath water from the oil and smell of it and then the familiar drag of a razor as two days worth of hair started to get cleared from his cheeks.  He’d never been shaved before.  It should have made him nervous but he felt too relaxed, and  - he knew she wouldn’t hurt him.  He’d asked for punishment but she wouldn’t do it this way.  This wasn’t safe punishment.

She knew what she was doing and soon his face and throat were clean again, splashed with more of the water and oil and, while his eyes were still closed, she slathered something on his entire face that smelled a little creamy and felt a bit like - face cream? Whatever it was, she rubbed it in and he decided he liked the smell of it after all.

“All right.  Stand up.  _Slowly_.  Keep your hand on the wall next to you. Take your time.”

Really unable to see thanks to the cream, he did as he was told, gingerly forcing himself upright and feeling like a kitten, completely drained and weak from the heat that had sapped all his strength out of him.  Whatever she had in mind for punishment, he wasn’t going to be able to even pretend to put up a fight. 

And he couldn’t even bring himself to care in that moment.

He heard a gurgle, felt the water level around his legs starting to drain and then she warned:

“I’m turning on the shower.  It won’t be cold.  It will only be lukewarm but it will still be cooler than you’re used to.  Don’t move.”

He nodded - and then the shower came on, somehow above him even though he was taller than her by at least a good head.  He shuddered, deeply uncomfortable with the temperature shift for a moment and then - 

the sigh came out of him despite himself and he hadn’t thought he could relax any more but somehow the water seemed to wash away the worst of the loggy feeling from the heat.  

“You’re going to have to rinse off your own face.  You can move now.”

He shouldn’t have smiled.  He knew he shouldn’t.

But he had to wash off his own face because she wasn’t tall enough.

He did his best to hide his smile by raising his good hand and tipping his head to the spray of water, scrubbing first his face and then, when she told him to finish the rest of his body with the cloth she gave him, sudsing off the last of the oil even if the scent of it stayed on his skin.  By the time he was done he felt - 

he felt good.

Ridiculously good for something as simple as just having gotten clean.  He felt - 

human.

He felt human again.

She was standing next to the tub with several towels in her arms and, he saw, wearing an oversized sweatshirt over the leggins he’d noticed earlier.  Her hair was only in a ponytail now too, instead of the usual bun and her glasses - and the eye makeup - were gone.  There was no change from the usual calm stillness in her eyes however or her face when she handed him the first towel.

“Dry off.  Use as many as you need.  Wrap one around your waist when you’re done and then come back out into the living room.”

She left him then and he wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.  His brain was kicking back in again, albeit slowly, and his body was still far too relaxed and lethargic.  He felt as if he was missing something vital and yet he couldn’t even bring himself to be upset by that.  Lisa knew what she was doing.  That was the whole point.  In this world, she had complete control and all he had to do was what she told him to.  He had no responsibly beyond that and no expectations.

But he’d never seen her out of ‘uniform’ before.

He didn’t linger though, drying off as completely as he could and leaving the towels draped over the hangers before wrapping the last one around his waist and making his way back out to the living room.  It was empty so he knelt down in his spot and simply waited for her.  That felt good too.  He knew exactly what was expected of him and what to do.  There was nothing else he had to anticipate, nothing he had to guess at.  As long as he followed her instructions everything would go smoothly.  He shut his eyes and exhaled. 

Her feet padded back into the room a minute or two later and came to a stop in front of him.  White socks.  Not shiny black leather.  Her hand still rested on his head the same way though and still fisted in his hair with the same firm hold.  The relief flooded through him.  She would take care of everything.

“With me,” her fingers combed through his hair and then she was moving again and he stood and followed her, knowing he should dread whatever was coming next because surely it was time for his punishment. That was the whole point of tonight.  But it was hard to feel anything but content and a little drowsy and she didn’t lead him back down the hallway to the guest room but into another room instead, one that was lined with mismatched bookshelves and a disorganized desk top and one of those boho overstuffed couches you probably only inherited from some eccentric distant aunt.

“Down you go,” she gestured to the couch and he sat on the edge of it, watching her as she moved around the room, turning off lights until just a dim one on the desk was left on and then pulling a blanket down from somewhere to wrap around his shoulders.

It smelled faintly like her shampoo as she fused with it until he was bundle up properly in it and she’d taken the damp towel from him.

“Stretch out on the sofa, facing the door.  I’ll be right back.”

And then she was gone again with the towel and he was left in a room that smelled faintly of old books and her shampoo, with the very faint sounds of the outside world at night in faint traces of distant car filtering though the closed and shaded window behind him.

He was going to go to sleep on her, he thought as he tucked his chin down into the blanket and the couch seemed to fit his body perfectly.  He was going to fall asleep on her and really ruin their session.  Except she came in just before he could decide if he should sit back up to keep it from happening or if her orders were more important and she sat down on the floor near his head.

“Here,” she passed him a carton of something that smelled like:

“Fried rice?”

She handed over a pair of take-out chopsticks and then opened her own.

“Orange chicken and sweet and sour noodles too if you’ve got a preference.  Spring rolls as well.  And tea.  I expect you to eat and drink as much as you need starting now.”

She set them all on the coffee table in front of him and he noticed the tea had a slice of orange floating in it.  Slow, he propped himself up, just a little.

“You’re not going to punish me.”

She shook her head even if her voice didn’t change from its usual steady calm.

“I am not going to punish you.”

“This isn’t a session.”

Another head shake as she dug into her carton with her own chopsticks.

“This is a session, Takashi.  This is just what you really needed, not what you thought you needed.”

He let the scent of the rice lure him, aware, suddenly and all at once, how long it had been since he’d eaten.  Let himself enjoy the first few bites and had to fight to keep from inhaling it more quickly.  She’d told him to eat.  They were still having a session.  He was supposed to follow her instructions.

Once the carton was only a third full however and he’d eaten his way through several spring rolls and some of the orange chicken as well as finished three cups of the orange tea that tasted a bit like fall to him, he finally slowed down enough to ask:

“Why?”

Lisa had already set aside her own food and was sipping her way through her tea and she looked at him over the edge of the delicate cup for a long moment with her bottomless dark eyes before she blinked very slowly at him.

“Because you can’t save the world.  No matter how much you think you should.  Because no one should be punished for being human and I am not going to let that pattern take root in your mind and enforce it.  Because you weren’t in the right place mentally when you asked for pain and its my job to recognize that as your dominant.  And because you’ve already been hurt, far far too much and you deserve a bit of healing.”  Her hand reached out and he leaned down automatically so that she could stroke his hair off his forehead, closing his eyes at her touch.  His chest hurt again suddenly and he barely caught the choke in his throat.

“Come here,” she set aside her tea and opened his arms and he wasn’t sure how he moved so quickly but suddenly he was in her arms, larger body bowed into her smaller one, his face pressed into her shoulder.  He managed two attempts at steadying his breathing to cut things off - and then suddenly, he was crying despite that.  Great ugly sobs that wracked his whole body and had him huddling down into her.  And she held him close against her and murmured words into his damp hair, love names and praise, hands stroking over his back and shoulders, his damp hair, the back of his bowed neck.  The tangled crash of emotions swept through him so powerfully, so completely, that he didn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed or ashamed of himself for not being stronger.  She never told him to be stronger when he was with her.  So he cried, alarmed a little by how long it went on but she never let go of him and her voice, soft murmurs of affection and affirmation, never died or whispered away.  By the time he was finally down to the rasping chokes against her throat, he was exhausted.  Completely hollowed out inside and out and as weak as a kitten.  Things went blurry then, mind shutting him down for its own wellfare, and he didn’t try to fight it.  Here was safe.  Here he didn’t have to be in charge or strong or in control.  Even drifting to sleep, he instinctively knew that and clung to it.  He was aware, distantly, when she helped him back onto the couch and had him stretch out.  Rewrapped him in the blanket and tucked it down around him.  At some point there was a pillow under his head that also smelled like her shampoo.  Already dozing, he felt her rolling a shrinker sock onto his arm even though he’d never told her about amputation care and knew he hadn’t brought any of his to leave here.  Finally he felt her press a kiss to his forehead and slit his eyes open just enough to watch her set a glass of water on the table near him.

“Sleep all night without dreams,” she murmured low, stroking his hair back again and her eyes were an entire dark sky above him.  “I will be right here the whole time.”  His muscles were already loose and he felt sleep, endless and too thick for dreams, pulling him downward. The last thing he heard before he drifted away was the slight lilt in her voice as she told him:

“You can treat me to breakfast at the diner across the road when you wake up.”


	2. Chapter 2

He dreamed of his face between her thighs and the sound of her voice crooning praise to him while he lapped up the liquid heat of her need and swallowed it down his throat like honey.

He woke up and he didn't feel sick to his stomach.  It was the first thing he noticed.  That he didn't feel sick.

He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't felt sick waking up.

Instead he felt warm.  Safe.  Satiated.  Relaxed.  And instinctively he knew what, and who, that meant even before his mind framed any thoughts at all.

Lisa.

She was nearby.  He wouldn't have felt so safe and relaxed if she wasn't nearby and an inhale brought him the scent of the cinnamon tea she often fixed for him after one of their sessions, comforting and reassuring.  

Except there were other scents mingled with the cinnamon and his mind latched on to them, telling him before he'd even figured out why that something was different this time.  He smelled the faint floral of her hair, smelled the even more faint scent of old vanilla that reminded him of used bookstores.  But what had him struggling to get his eyes open was the smell of his own skin, something rich and exotic, barely there now as it layered over all the other scents.

Bath oil.

The bath oil she'd used last night in his tub.

His punishment.

He got his eyes opened then and sat up slowly, blanket falling around his hips and lap as he looked first to the empty arm chair in the corner and then around the empty room and then finally down at the mug of cinnamon tea that was still faintly giving off steam sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch he'd fallen asleep on.  

His phone, fully charged, was next to it and he reached, caught himself having to decide what to pick up first as he remembered he wasn't wearing his arm and went, after a minute's hesitation over being self-indulgent, for the tea first. Took his first careful sip and sighed out as his mind finally kicked in and focused.

And the embarrassment washed over him.

Because he'd been thoughtless last night.  Self-centered and selfish.  The memory of what he'd asked her to do washed over him and so did the shame. That wasn't the kind of agreement they had.  And he hadn't asked her for it in the way she deserved.  He'd been thinking of his own pain but he hadn't considered that he'd been trying to use her to make it go away.  Last night hadn't been honest between them, or at least he hadn't come to her honestly and that had been abusing her and what they had between them.  

Yet - there was still hot tea waiting for him this morning and a glance at his phone told him she'd let him sleep in until eight.

She'd let him spend the night.

He'd never spent the night before.  Clients, she was very firm, didn't get to spend the night.  Shiro knew he was her client - and yet there was a very quiet sense of pride, something he did his best to push down as soon as it reared its head inside him - that she'd let _him_ stay.

Balancing the cup on his knee, he checked his phone in between swallows, slowly waking up more.  His team had left him plenty of texts but there was no breaking news and he was sure they'd been very careful to not call him. He was always on call, even when he wasn't on duty, that was why, even during sessions, Lisa had his phone - but he knew his team tried to buffer him from himself sometimes.  And he didn't doubt that however he'd looked when he'd finally left the precinct last night, it had been bad enough that his team had worried about him.  He appreciated their concern - but they probably would have worried even more if they'd know he wasn't going home or to a bar.  None of them knew about Lisa though and he liked to keep it that way.

She'd let him spend the night.

He smiled into the last sip of his tea and then set the mug on the table next to his phone.  Looked around the room and spotted his neatly folded clothes, his gun and wallet on top, sitting in the chair by the desk.   His prosthetic was on the desk as well.  Getting up, he padded naked over to the clothes, shivering a little in the chill of the morning air and then let himself out of the room to step across the hall to the guest bathroom.  His dream was already fading, softening into a memory of long dark hair and long pale hungry hands but it had left him with some physical signs that he'd rather take care of on his own before facing her this morning.  It wasn't as if she hadn't seen him hard before.  Sometimes that was a part of one of their sessions and the ropes tended to turn him on. He'd learned not to be ashamed of that.   It just seemed - 

more personal, waking up hard, naked and wrapped up in one of her blankets, in her apartment.

By the time he left the bathroom he was more collected, more together.  A shave and toothbrush would have been nice but splashing his face with cold water had finished waking him up and getting dressed and hooking on his prosthetic had helped him mentally shift.  He was pulling on his holster, snug against his shoulders and back as he went looking for her and she wasn't hard to find, sitting at the small table in her kitchen with a cup of tea and a newspaper in her other hand.  His mug from earlier was already drying in the dish rack next to the sink.

He noted she was reading the financial section and also realized the front page section was missing entirely and he wondered how much of that was for his sake and how much was simply her usual morning routine.  He realized he was hungry to know the little things, wanted to know how her mornings usually went when she was relaxed and wasn't 'working'.   Greedily wanted to see her without her professional mask on, to catch up all the little hints of who she was when she wasn't being anyone else.

He was mentally stepping over a line he hadn't been invited to step over and he did his best to reel it back.  She raised dark eyes over the top of her mug at him, sharp and aware and for a second he thought she'd caught him anyway, with that strange ability she seemed to have that almost let her read his mind sometimes.  But then she smiled, something soft and private just for him and gave him the slow blink that signaled her approval.  He felt his chest relax and hadn't even realized it had been tense.  She wasn't upset.  She didn't regret letting him stay the night.  She wasn't going to correct him despite the way he'd come to her last night and what he'd asked. _  
_

_Punish me._

Something in him stirred as he thought the words.

She wasn't in uniform.  He was.  It made a shift in their dynamics.   Reminded him of the first time he'd come to her, a detective looking for a disguise to help him solve a murder.  She looked a great deal now the way she had then, barefoot in jeans, hair in a loose pony tail.   Watching him with waiting eyes.

"I wondered if you were still up for those pancakes I owe you from last night."

"I thought you'd never ask," she set down the paper and her mug with a smile and he found he was grinning back at her.

The diner was just a couple blocks away and she strolled along next to him down the sidewalk in the autumn air as if they went out for breakfast every morning, little subconscious bounce to her steps, long legs easily matching his long steps, sneakers crunching the fallen leaves.  

He'd like to take her out for breakfast every morning, he thought.  Soaking in how good it felt to have her next to him.

"I'm going to out eat you," she warned him as the bell jingled and he held the door open for her, ducking under his arm as she said it and he snorted.

"Sounds like a challenge."

Her pony tail swung as she tossed it.

"Afraid to lose?"

"You're just trying to get me to eat," he told her, dry, recognizing the trick and she simply smiled smugly over her shoulder at him as she picked their booth and slid into her side of it, leaving, he noticed, him the side that faced the door so he could watch it and the windows.

"Winner gets to ask a favor, no strings attached."

He reached for the menu as he slid into his seat across from her at the booth.

"You're on."  

They both ended up just going for the pancakes, though Shiro got a side of bacon to go with his, breaking the crisp meat up to sprinkle it over the syrup on his pancakes.  While she didn't wolf hers down the way he did, Lisa did match him for the first plate.  It was just a diner, like a thousand others in the city and yet he didn't know if pancakes had ever tasted so good and for a while Shiro forgot he had been cornered into eating them, simply enjoying their flavor and the feeling of real food hitting his stomach for a change.  

He went through two cups of coffee and Lisa sipped and made fussy faces to herself at hers.  At first he thought she didn't think it was very good coffee but then she stole his second cup when he was halfway through it and loaded it down with so much milk and sugar it was barely even brown colored anymore, pushing her still full cup over to him in exchange and he realized, delighted, that she simply didn't like coffee but was insisting on drinking it anyway.  She settled in once she had her coffee flavored milk going but stopped after she was only a third of her way through her second plate, picking at it without really eating while he finished off his second plate and then gently tugged hers away from her to eat that as well.  She let him take it with a rueful smile but her dark eyes were satisfied and he knew that, if he'd won their 'competition', she'd won the overall game in getting him to eat a full meal without rushing off.

She did that, played the long game, patient and willing to take as long as necessary to win.  Again he wondered how she'd gotten into the lifestyle she had and why she'd then gotten out.  Wondered how many clients she'd left behind, stuck finding other masters that would never live up to what they'd had with her.  She sipped her way through his stolen coffee and ate bites of bacon off his plate and he suddenly wished he was sitting next to her for no reason he could name other than wanting to be closer.  Instead he set down his fork after his last bite and took a long swallow of his own coffee, settling back in the booth and hooking one arm over the back of it.  The diner wasn't very busy and the muffled clink of silverware on dishes and mugs was comforting.  He waited until the waitress had cleared away the plates and refilled his mug before stretching out his legs and tapping the side of her ankle with his shoe.

"Sure you want to ask for it now?" she already knew what was coming, looking at him across the table, looking amused but not worried.  He was glad about that part.  He never wanted her to feel she ever had to worry about anything he'd ask her.  "It might be the kind of ace you'd want to keep up your sleeve."

"I want to ask for it now," he'd given it thought, while he'd been eating and it had solidified inside him the more he thought about it.  She wrapped both her hands around her mug and sat forward, giving him her curiosity.  

"All right," she agreed even before he asked.  He intentionally kept his body language loose.  She wasn't the only one that understood the importance of setting something up and he stayed relaxed on his side of the booth.  Watched her for just a moment, to let her know he wasn't rushing into this.  Before he simply said:

"I want you to punish me."

He watched her face go still, watched, for the first time since he'd woken up, the mask of her profession slip half into place over her features. It was the school teacher that tipped her pointed chin a little at him and she didn't have to be wearing her glasses to look down at him through them apparently.  He stayed the way he was however, refused to stiffen or fumble more and after a long minute she asked:

"Why?"

"I wasn't in the right place before.  You were right and I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have asked you what I did.  Thank you for hearing what I really needed instead of what I said."  He wrapped his human hand around his mug and looked back up at her.  Saw the way she was watching him and saw the way her eyes had softened.  He wasn't over-stepping.  He inhaled.  Met her eyes full on.  "I want you to wreck me, Lisa.  I want you to utterly take me apart.  I want you to reduce me to a begging for more mess and then keep going.  I want you to completely unwind me and I want you to be rough about it."  Even as he said it he could feel the start of coiling pressure in his lower stomach, the beginning heat between his thighs.  Two years ago he never would have even thought about this kind of thing, much less applied it to himself.  But something about last night - and this morning - and dozens of other sessions leading up to it that had been the razor edge of borderline - 

"Punish me” he drawled with a slow smile.  “And let me enjoy it."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so happy birthday to the best boi and also this is not what I intended to write for Shiro's birthday but its what came out. So - wooooo!

His eyes focused on the fall of dark hair long before they recognized anything else in the room.

Hospital room.  He was standing in the doorway of a hospital room.  And time seemed to have frozen on him.

It wasn't the first time he'd been in a hospital room.  He was cop.  He spent a lot of time in them, asking questions, giving answers to the bleak searching faces of loved ones, promising to see justice done - for good or for bad for the person in the bed.  He was familiar with the pale walls and the white sheets and the sterile overload of silver.  With the friendless chair in the corner, the hanging bags of solution, the wires that ran like mechanical veins over and through and around everything.

He'd woken up in one himself, not that many years ago. 

He knew what the ceiling of a hospital room looked like intimately.

He'd taught himself, first lying in the bed and later walking into dozens and dozens of the same room on repeat on different floors and wings and buildings, to detach.  To set aside a corner pocket of himself that couldn't bear the white and the wires and the pale walls and the smell, to leave that part of himself outside and to focus.  He'd gotten good at it.

Except there was a fall of dark hair across the starched pillow of the bed and that part of himself refused to wait outside or be shut away because of it.

"What happened?"

He wasn't sure how it came out but the beat cop sitting in the chair by the bed looked up at the sound of it and his hand was instinctively going to his weapon before he remembered where he was.  His eyes found the looming shape approaching the bed, widened and then relaxed.  Shiro, belatedly, remembered to shift his arm so his badge was visible but apparently he was recognizable on sight to this cop.  Or maybe just the prosthetic arm, peeking out of the rolled up shirt sleeve, was.

"Simple armed robbery.  A bodega down on Crescent was being held up and things went south.  Ms. Kaga took a bullet for a kid.  The shooter split but the cameras caught him just fine.  We expect a pick up soon."  He shifted his notebook, as if to prove he had been doing the interview and not just sitting next to a pretty woman's bedside but Shiro wasn't paying attention to whether the man should feel guilty or not.  Instead his eyes were on Lisa's washed out face, drained of all its color - and her dark dark Osiris eyes watching him silently from the depths of it.  He nodded, not for her but for the guardian at her side and the man shifted, probably gave her an encouraging smile or a nod or some form of goodbye because her eyes shifted from Shiro's face and she gave the side of the bed a small smile.

"Remember," her voice was very soft, feather brushes and cobwebs.  "Tell her.  Every day.  Words matter.  Everything we are is built on words we've heard."

"I will.  Ma'am," the cop sounded both a little embarrassed and a little determined and Shiro managed to wrench his eyes away from her long enough to watch the cop give him a nod and walk over to join him.  "We're just waiting on some papers for her to sign.  Docs say she'll be fine.  Nothing vital hit."  Shiro gave him a nod in return and turned to watch him go.  Waiting until the room was empty of everyone before he turned back to her.

Her dark eyes were watching him again but they were softer now and her hand, the one that wasn't tape and plastic veins outside of her body, moved on the bed where it lay, palm turning and fingers unwinding for him.

He was leaning low over her, half kneeling at the side of the bed, both of his hands, metal and flesh, engulfing hers, before he even took his next breath.  Suddenly everything was too real and not real enough all at once and he felt as if something was constricting around his entire chest and inside of it as well and slowly crushing him.  He wanted to press his face into her hand but that would mean he'd have to let go and he couldn't bring himself to.  Instead he simply pressed his face hard enough to hurt into his own hands and squeezed his eyes as tightly shut as he could.

He knew.  Better than the average person he knew how random violence was.  But - it wasn't supposed to happen to her.  She wasn't a part of his world that held senseless, random pain.

In his human hand, hers was cold.

He felt a familiar fist and then tug in his hair, even if it was weaker than it usually was.  And then the tug let go and her free hand shifted to stroke over his hair, familiar and soothing.

"I'm here," her voice was low and soft and it didn't quite reach its usual rich thrum for him but it held the ghost of it.  "I'm here, Takashi.  Nothing was lost.  I'm right here."

"What happened?"  Again, he didn't recognize his own voice and he couldn't seem to care.  "Tell me what happened."

"I went down to the corner store.  You know Mrs. Kim's.  The one with the fat grey cat and my citrus tea.  A man came in with a gun and wanted the til emptied.  We were all behaving but Jun, Mrs. Kim's son, the tall teenage one, came out of the storage room unexpectedly.  He didn't realize we were being robbed and it scared the gunman when he came out.  The gun went off and I made sure Jun didn't get hit.  Things are a bit fuzzy after that but the gunman took off, Mrs. Kim called the police for an ambulance and I ended up here."  Her voice, already too thin had grown thinner by the end of her story and her hand paused in its stroking through his hair.  There was the gentle tap from one of her fingers.  "Takashi.  What are you doing here?  Officer McKillip probably thinks you're working this case but you're not, are you?"

"Not yet."  He could lift his head then, finally.  Soothed enough by the familiar stroke of her fingers and the sound of her voice enough to start to put things back together where they'd almost fallen only moments ago.  He let go of her with his prosthetic and found the plastic mug of water on the table near the bed, finding it full enough to indicate it was alright for her to drink and holding it for her so she could reach the straw.  She gave him a grateful look as she swallowed down water in slow sips.  Her eyes were still waiting however.

"Mrs. Salish called me.  I don't know where she got my number but she said you'd been hurt and you were here.  I came as soon as I could."

She drew back from the straw and looked at him, something between reproval and fond exasperation in her eyes.

"I hope your 'as soon as I could' doesn't get you in trouble with your superiors."

He looked steadily back at her.

"I hope you know I don't care if it does."

Her lips pressed together thin at that but they weren't in her apartment and this wasn't a session and he wasn't the least bit apologetic about his choices anyway.  Finally she exhaled through her nose and then winced.  His fingers tightened instinctively on her hand, as if he could keep her from being pulled away from him but she only shifted a little with a tight face and then settled again, looking at him a bit apologetically.

"I'm sorry about Mrs. Salish.  She has your number because I gave it to her.  She keeps track of everything that goes on in the building whether we want her to or not so I knew that if anything happened to me, she'd be the first to know."

" _I'm_ your emergency contact?" he wasn't sure how he felt, suddenly flushed with a strange protective and yet awed feeling that refused to settle into something recognizable.  Lisa's eyes, for the first time, slid sideways.

"I never expected anything to happen.  I don't have anyone in the city.  At first it was just to make sure you didn't show up for an appointment and think I had turned you away.  And then - " her voice cut off and she frowned, still looking at the monitor next to her bed instead of him even if she didn't turn her face away.  She shifted and made another face.  Finally shifted her eyes back up at him and they were dark mirrors, hiding her behind them.  "I just thought you should be the one to know.  If anything happened to me."  A pause and then her lips offered an apologetic smile and her eyes finally looked at him again.

"Someone has to feed that monster you left me with."

"His name is Black and you love him or you wouldn't let him stay."

"You tricked me into getting a cat with you because you knew if you brought that beaten up rabble rouser stray to me when it was raining outside that I wouldn't have the heart to turn him away."

"You do have a weakness for dark haired, scarred up strays."

He saw the war in her eyes over her answer, watched it melt as the pain medication and tiredness won.

"Maybe," she admitted before looking over at the water again.  He brought the straw back to her to drink from.

Things had changed between them since she'd agreed to his request to punish him, though she insisted on calling them 'intensity sessions' instead of punishment, too aware of how her words built the world they both lived in when he was in her apartment.

Too insistent he didn't deserve 'punishment' for anything he'd done, refusing to even pretend play at it with him.  Maybe she was right to do so. 

He would have believed any judgement she passed on him.

But things had changed between them since that first new session.

Lisa wasn't afraid to be rough with him.  She never pushed him over the edge, never tipped him into despair or hopelessness.  Lisa's sessions weren't about breaking him.  They were about wiping him clean and mindless, until there was nothing inside of him but need or release.  She shut his mind off, forced him to focus on nothing but his own body and the relief - and release - of it was incredible.  All his life, he'd been taught he had to be strong enough, had to be reliable enough, had to carry others and he didn't honestly mind that.  Most days.  It was a source of pride in him, even a source of self, to be strong enough to protect and to lift up others when they needed someone.  He liked that.  But sometimes.... sometimes it was a weight that got so heavy he wasn't sure he could carry it and not break. 

Lisa never told him he needed to be strong.  When she had him spent and begging and exhausted, at the end of himself - it was a reward.  A good thing.  An accomplishment for both of them.  He didn't have to live up to any standards for her.  He didn't have to be the strong one, the one in charge.  He could entirely let go and let her take over and know that it was not only safe - it was all right.  He didn't know that there was a single psychologist that would say his method of releasing the stress of his life, his job, his world, was healthy that way - but he knew it felt incredible and that afterward everything was easier and he could breathe. 

And he was quickly becoming a glutton for the aftercare she gave him at the end of those special sessions too, always too exhausted mentally and physically to even feel the guilt he usually would about the way he soaked up her attention and praise and physical pampering.

But there was more.  Lisa never treated him as if he was glass or breakable either.  And that meant just as much to him.  Because ever since he'd lost his arm - there was a certain way people treated him, even people that continued to rely on him being strong.  As if he were an iron golem - with a spine of glass.  As if he were Atlas carrying the world - until one day he might snap, unexpected and tragic.  Like he was a walking timebomb, good for carrying everything but always with the hint that at some point, the last second on his endurance would tick down and he'd explode, taking everything with him when he went.  It was this undercurrent of 'the lieutenant can handle it' and 'one day someone will breathe wrong and he'll snap' both flowing through everyone he seemed to come into regular contact with.  And the worse thing was - he wasn't sure that any of them were wrong.

But there was never any reserved caution in Lisa's eyes.  She weighted him, measured and judged whatever she saw in him day by day, but once she'd judged, it was finished.  Whatever they did, intensity sessions or simple regular sessions, before and after, there was never any waiting in her eyes or the way she treated him.  She was aware of the fact he had triggers, some he hadn't even been aware of himself until she carefully found them, of reactions he couldn't control, things that reduced him to past horrors and she was careful with those, careful to watch for and avoid them or remove them the second they showed up to surprised them both.  But she wasn't waiting for him to snap and do - whatever it was everyone, himself included, vaguely expected him to do when it happened.  And he'd realized, somewhere in a moment of clarity, that it wasn't that she thought he was unbreakable.

It was just that she had complete faith in him being able to come back from it if it happened.

That she intended to be there to help him back if it ever happened.

For the first time in years - he found he wasn't as afraid of whatever it was that lived in the shadows inside himself anymore.  He was still cautious about it, still aware of what might be there.  It just - didn't make him mentally lock down in panic each time he felt something jagged stir inside. 

If he broke - he'd rise again.

It was something he carried with him into his day to day life now.  She was so careful about the marks her sessions left on him.  He liked that mark though, one of the many he carried inside of himself and this one felt good.

"How long are they going to keep you?" he asked it, thumb rubbing over the back of her hand, thinking how small her hand was and how he'd never noticed that before.  Not small as in tiny but long and thin, nothing but soft skin over bone and very little else.  She drew back from the straw, settling a little to show she was done with the water for now and her eyes finally looked back at him.  Tired but she was in them again, looking at him out of their darkness.  He'd stopped telling himself he didn't recognize the affection in them she pretended wasn't there.

"They want to keep me overnight.  For observation."  Her voice was better, now that she'd had water.  Maybe - now that he was there.  He liked to hope so.  It was still low and too light, too wispy, but it sounded more like her.  "They promised if I was good they'd let me go home later tomorrow."

"All right," as if it mattered whether he agreed or not but he still needed to say it.  And then:  "What can I do?"

She smiled, tired but real and he felt the way it hurt his heart to see it so small and honest.

"Stop by on your way home and explain it to Black, please?  He'll probably want food too.  And - " her voice hesitated but - things had changed between them and so she admitted weakly:  "I never did get my tea."

He set the water aside and reached out, stroked the limp hair back from her face, chalk and ink, with his prosthetic. 

Things had changed between them.  He had a key to her apartment now.

"I'll deal with Black," he promised.  "I'll make sure you have plenty of tea stocked before you get home."  It was ridiculous how much seeing her face relax for him filled his heart.

"And I'll tell them to call me when you're ready to go so I can pick you up and bring you home."

That woke her up again and he'd known it would.  But he already knew how the conversation would go and she needed time to get used to it.

"No," her protest was immediate and soft, the way she told him 'no' when he was asking for something she knew he wasn't ready for.  He was shaking his head even as she started to do the same to hers, eyes not looking away from her.  So her fingers tightened on his and she said, firmer:  "Takashi, no."

"Lisa," it was his turn to be gentle but unmoved.  He lowered his face to rest his lips against their joined hand and look at her over the top of it.  "I am picking you up and I am taking you home when you're signed out here.  If I think you're going to try to sneak out, I'll just spend the whole night here in the chair.  You're not going home without me."

"Takashi," she always used his name when she expected his complete attention but she already had it.  He knew what she was doing but his mind was made up.  She wasn't going to struggle across town in a cab or uber and then have to settle into her apartment by herself.  She'd taken care of him when he'd been wounded to the bone emotionally before.  He wasn't going to do any less when she was physically hurt.  It wasn't a matter of pay-back.  It was a matter of what his heart told him.  And when it came to Lisa he'd found his heart was very reliable.

"Officer McKillip thinks you're here because you're on the case.  But if you show up and take me home, people are going to notice.  Maybe people you work with.  I haven't tried to hide my past and your team is very good at digging up facts.  I'll be fine on my own.  I'm a big girl.  You can stop by after work if you want to check on me but there's no reason -" she cut herself off before whatever words she'd been about to use came out, deciding on the safer and more vague continuation of:  "there's no reason to change things."

Things have already changed, he wanted to tell her.  You let me spend the night after some of our sessions now because I'm too exhausted to go home, because the aftercare sometimes lasts into the next morning.  You let me burn toast and 'make breakfast' for you.  My clothes are in your closet so I can go to work after I spend the night, my toothbrush and razor are next to your sink for the same reason.  You use the same mug for me every time you make me tea now and I don't even know if you realize it, 'my' mug.  I know what TV shows you like to watch at night, what books are on your shelves, that Hallmark commercials make you tear up, the sound you make when you're trying not to laugh at something intentionally stupid I've said and the way rainy days make you lazy. 

I know what you look like, when you're not wearing your heels.

You call Black 'ours'.

Things have already changed between us.

He shook his head instead and simply said:

"Maybe its time they did."

In the end, they compromised.  She signed herself out the next afternoon and he waited in the car at the entrance for her.  She didn't like it - but neither did he.

There was no mistaking the way she relaxed when she was finally settled into the passenger seat though, when the door closed and shut out everything but the air conditioning and the quiet.  Her eyes shut and she rested her head back against the back of the seat, body going loose and silently helpless.  He wanted to reach out, touch her, brush the hair back from her face - but he wanted to take her away from here more, wanted to take her home where she belonged, where she'd be safe - away from the hospital and all that it meant.  She stayed quiet as he drove, soaking in the lack of surgical noise, the freedom from needles and tubes, the comfort of something familiar.  Maybe even the scent of him.  Finally, without opening her eyes, she quietly said:

"You don't know how people will change when they know you are part of the crowd we are.  How differently they'll look at you, how the way they think about you will change.  You think you do - but you never really understand until it happens."  One dark eye opened to look at him.  Remembering a past he didn't know about, hadn't asked about.  Not yet.  Her voice was soft.  "Your team means too much to you.  You all rely on each other and being comfortable working together.  Finding out why you come to me.... they would start to second guess themselves and their responses to you.  Whether they could make that joke, crack that observation, whether there was a second meaning in what you said."

"They already do that," he told her, not taking his eyes off the road, not needing to to see her in his mind's eye next to him.  "About my arm."  A pause and he added:  "About my PTSD."

"I'm sorry.  Eggshells are still eggshells, even when the people walking on them are doing it because of love."

"They're better than they used to be."  He knew what she meant, he didn't hold it against them.  There was affection in his voice as he smiled.  "You should see their faces when they forget about it until they've already said something these days."  He paused.  "You don't have to always protect me, Leese."

Her lips pressed together, thin.  He caught it from the edge of his eyes and didn't turn his head to look.  Her exhale was silent but he knew her body language well enough by now to know when it happened.  Her voice was very quiet.

"I'm supposed to protect you from things in my world that you haven't experienced yet.  Things that might not turn out to be what they seem on the surface."  She went quiet but he knew she wasn't done.  Waited.  Finally she added:  "I don't want your generous heart to lead you into pain.  Not over me.  Not ever over me."

Her eye closed, he could feel the watching darkness of it wink out.  Could feel the way her body relaxed even more into the seat.  It swept something domestic and familiar and protective through him, an odd combination of feelings he was unfamiliar with, that was almost enough to make him clutch, on the edge of something much larger than he'd meant to stand on the edge of.  Except she hummed and the familiar low note of it wrapped around him and the sudden panic slipped away before he could put a name on it.  He didn't say anything else, finishing the journey to her brownstone and parking his car in the first story garage.  She didn't have a car.  The parking spot fit his these days.  He cut the engine and pocketed the keys, out of his seat and over to her side to open her door before she completely roused.  She gave him a mild look, eyelids heavy and then he watched the tension move across her forehead and settle between her eyebrows. 

Her apartment door was two flights of stairs up.

He didn't know why she thought he was going to let her walk it. 

Instead he leaned down, carefully wrapping her up in his arms, cradling her against his chest as he straightened.  She smelled like disinfectant and sterile cold places, almost enough to hide the faint lingering scent of old blood.  He rested his chin across the top of her head and shut the car door with the side of his leg before carrying her up the stairs.  She made a noise that was probably meant to be a protest but that murmured out long before it vocalized, arms lifting instead on the fade of it to wrap around his shoulders, making the gentler decision to let him take care of her.  He tucked her gingerly closer, careful of the bandages on her body and climbed the stairs.  Mrs. Salish was at the top of them, already waiting thanks to his call, and let them into the apartment with a key, Shiro had been told, that Lisa had long ago given her.

"There's a fresh casserole cooling on the stove," she instructed but didn't try to follow them in.  Wounded or not, Lisa's home was sacred and no one entered that she didn't specifically invite, needing permission for each time.  Shiro had perhaps overstepped once by asking the older woman to take care of things last night but they both knew it had only been temporary, while the mistress was away.  Mrs. Salish did reach in enough to leave the loaned key on the hallway table though, as if she was returning something that had finally served its purpose, and Shiro wondered if she'd already made herself a spare.  It might not be a bad idea, if Lisa ever needed help.  "Lots of meat and cheese to help you get your energy back.  I fed the Beast too.  Paper's on the kitchen table.  You two need anything and I'm just downstairs."

Shiro had no idea how much the Italian grandmother might know about the relationship he had with Lisa and what they did here.  She'd been outside, watching him through her rhinestone glasses as she fussed over the potted flowers that lined the brownstone's fence the first time he'd showed up, when Lisa had shut the door in his face, and she'd been around here or there often enough after to know he was a frequent visitor. 

She certainly knew he spent the night because he'd passed her coming out the morning after often enough.  As for the rest -

he couldn't imagine she hadn't been nosy with a key to the place, though Lisa always locked her 'Guest Room' when she wasn't home.  The old woman's soft face and the bird eyes behind the glasses didn't give away anything if she had realized more.

"Thank you," Lisa murmured from her place safely tucked against his throat and the older woman made tutting noises of dismissal and shut the door for them before Shiro could lean against it to.  With that protection between them, he quietly asked:

"I wonder how much she knows?"

"Enough," Lisa answered, humor whispering through her words, sounding smug.  "To let me know she thinks you have a very smackable ass."

His surprised snort and laughter trailed him down the hall.

"I'll have to make sure I wear my tight pants next time I visit."

A desperate 'meow' of welcome and the sound of cat paws hurrying down the hall to greet them almost distracted him from her muttered:

"You don't already?"


End file.
